FAQ: Catan - Cities & Knights for PC/MAC

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Catan - Cities & Knights for PC/MAC

Originally, we had thought about integrating another, “higher” level of difficulty. Due to comments from players, we have now dropped this idea. A separate, higher level of difficulty seemed not to be of great interest; instead, many players wished for an easier level. We thus have implemented an Easy Campaign instead of a more difficult Campaign, to make things easier for newcomers. But the pros also benefited: we used many of our ideas for a high-difficulty level to improve the “Normal” mode, which is why the “Normal” mode should remain challenging for advanced players too.

The program Catan – Cities & Knights is only suitable for play against computer opponents. It doesn’t possess its own online mode.
However, the Catan Online World is part of the installation package. This program allows you to play the Catan board games and various other board games by Klaus Teuber online. You must register to use the program; to play the Settlers of Catan base game, all you need is a no-cost Free Account.Further information about the Catan Online World can be found here.

Particularly when things are not going well and the robber comes exactly in the worst moment, players are sometimes quick to allege that the random number generator is flawed or manipulated. However, it has been proven in extensive tests that this is definitely not the case.
Because two dice are used, the numbers rolled in each game basically follow a triangular distribution, meaning that, for example, a “12” occurs less frequently than a “6.” One has to keep in mind, however, that we are dealing with statistical probabilities. It is therefore possible – although not very likely – that a “7” is rolled 7 times in a row. In a normal Catan game with approximately 60 dice rolls in total, the number of rolls is too small to always result in a perfect Gaussian distribution. Certain anomalies may well occur, and it could happen that the “6” is rolled more often than the “8,” even though the expected probability for these numbers to be rolled is the same. But all this doesn’t mean that the random number generator is flawed or manipulated – it’s simply in the nature of things and wouldn’t be different when you play at the table.
In order to make the dice roll results as random as possible, the routine used for the random number generator is the renowned Mersenne Twister method. Among experts, this routine is considered as the ideal combination of speed and performance (in this case, randomness)More information about the method can be found here.

We received some comments from players who perceived the computer opponents’ behavior in the game as unfair. Well, the computer opponents may play tough, but they never play unfair or against the rules. It was our goal to create a strong artificial intelligence that poses a challenge even after having played several games, which makes the situation a little more difficult for newcomers. This is why we subsequently added a Campaign for newcomers where the computer opponents play in a more “amiable” fashion.
Klaus Teuber also wrote a blog post on this topic.

In “Catan – The First Island,” the first adaptation of the board game for PC, the computer opponents accompanied the situations occurring during the game with spoken comments. This was one of the most frequently mentioned points of criticism about the game at that time. People perceived the comments as annoying and distracting. We therefore decided to not include spoken comments in “Catan – Cities & Knights” but to loosen up the Campaign with spoken comments during the story sequences in between the individual scenarios instead.

“Catan – The First Island” was a successful program, but it is 10 years old now. The former team of programmers no longer exists as such, and further development would not have been possible. Reprogramming had thus become inevitable. In late 2007, when we decided to develop a new Catan PC program, it was obvious that – unlike “Catan – The First Island” – this program had to contain not only the Settlers of Catan base game and Seafarers but also the “Cities & Knights” expansion. We analyzed the comments about “Catan – The First Island” that had reached us back then, and as a result designed a new concept that was supposed to focus on the essentials: varied scenarios and competent computer opponents.
In addition, unlike “Catan – The First Island,” we didn’t want to publish “Catan – Cities & Knights” as a regular-priced game but offer it at a more favorable price. This is why we refrained from including diverse optical gimmickry. But “Catan – Cities & Knights” is still quite comprehensive. It includes not only the complex “Cities & Knights” expansion – as yet never adapted to PC/Mac – but also a Campaign consisting of 20 scenarios.

Experience with other projects had shown that this mode is not used very frequently. In addition to that, we had to focus on the users’ most essential requests, to avoid creating a budget overrun. We therefore decided to do without a hotseat mode and put more effort into the Campaign and the computer opponents instead – something that many comments about the first PC game “Catan – The First Island” had regarded as important.

When entering the license code, please pay attention to the following:

Exact spelling is important – that includes case sensitivity!

Carefully recheck the information you entered upon purchase. Maybe a typo occurred. It is important that the information you provided when purchasing the program (name and e-mail address) match the information you enter in the program.

If you checked the information you provided and still are unable to activate the software, please contact out service team indicating your name and the e-mail address you provided when purchasing the program.

“Catan - Cities & Knights” is distributed online by Share-it on our behalf. Share-it rejects e-mail addresses from certain free e-mail providers. This is a precautionary measure, as Share-it observed a comparatively higher rate of online purchase abuse from these e-mail domains. However, if you have a paid e-mail account with a provider who also offers free e-mail accounts, Share-it can not distinguish whether your account is paid or free.

In this case, you can always place your order by phone. There are actually two customer services, one in the United States of America and one in Europe. You may contact the US customer service in English, while European support is available in German, English, French, Italian, Spanish, or Portuguese.

If you have purchased the download version via this website and encounter payment or billing problems, please contact our partner Share-it. Share-it is also the party you enter into the purchase agreement with.

Catan – Cities & Knights was developed and tested on Windows Vista and XP systems. Therefore, we cannot guarantee proper functioning of the program in other versions of Windows. There is some possibility that Catan – Cities & Knights will also run smoothly on an older system if Java 1.6 or higher is available for it. In this case, you should try to run the free demo version on the system. In principle, however, we do not provide support for Windows versions other than Vista and XP.